The Interstellar Song Contest

Chapter the 337th, where Graham Norton finally appears in a Doctor Who story (after a couple of previous attempts to gatecrash).

Plot:

[A recent story of the streaming era, so beware of spoilers ahead.] The Doctor and Bel materialise in Harmony Arena, a space station in a protective transparent bubble, in the year 2925. The arena is playing host to the interstellar song contest, presented by Rylan Clark (who's been revied from cryogenic freeze). The TARDIS team stay to watch the show, but soon the Doctor suspects something is wrong. Behind the scenes, one of the broadcasting crew Wynn from the planet Hellia is in cahoots with a terrorist from the same planet, Kid, and they have taken over. The audience in the arena including the Doctor are all ejected into space. They are still contained in the bubble, but frozen. The Doctor almost succumbs to freezing, but at the last second a vision of his granddaughter Susan inspires him to propel himself back. He meets up with Mike and Gary Gabbastone who help him hack into the arena's systems. Kid plans to use a delta wave to kill all the trillions of people watching as revenge against the corporation that sponsors the contest, who ravaged the planet Hellia for crops to make their product. The Doctor defeats Kid using a hard light hologram of himself. He is uncharacteristically rough with Kid, using the hologram to repeatedly hurt him. Kid and Wynn are arrested and taken away, and the Doctor, Mike and Gary work together to bring back and revive all the ladies and gentlemen floating in space. In a historic exhibit about the contest, a hologram of Graham Norton tells the Doctor and Bel that the Earth was destroyed on May 24th 2025. They have all the vindicator readings they need to travel back to that date; when they arrive, the TARDIS doors open and there is an explosion. Meanwhile, one of the last people to be revived is Mrs. Flood. She turns out to be an old enemy of the Doctor's, the Rani, and has been in the cold of space too long. She bi-generates, becoming two Ranis.

Context:

The Blu-ray box set of the ever-so slightly misnamed Doctor Who Season Two was delivered through my letterbox in late August 2025. This was not the William Hartnell nor even the David Tennant season two, but instead the second - and presumably final - series of Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor that was broadcast earlier in 2025. Since the blog started in 2015, whenever a new box set of recently-aired episodes arrived I would take the opportunity to use a random factor in deciding whether I would blog a story from the set, and which one if so. As this may be my last chance to do such a thing (for a while at least), I couldn't pass it up. There remained three stories from 2025 left un-blogged, The Well, the Interstellar Song Contest and two-part finale Wish World / The Reality War. I therefore rolled a d4, the first three numbered sides representing each of those three stories in turn, the fourth meaning no story would be blogged at this time. It came up as a two. I therefore skipped the earlier episodes and watched the sixth story on the set first, on my own one evening in late August.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now approaching the point where I catch up. Beyond the six stories now completed from the 2025 series, the tally stands at 12 Doctors' televisual eras completed (Doctors 1-4, 6-9 and 11-14), and 38 out of the 41 seasons completed to date (classic seasons 1-18, 20-26, and new series 1, 2, and 4-14). Of the 892 episodes of Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child up to The Reality War, 10 now remain.

First Time Round:

Through the previous five Saturdays of the 2025 run, my viewing was generally getting earlier and earlier. Episodes became available at 8am in the UK, but I like to sleep in a bit at weekends, so I never watched one quite that early. The Interstellar Song Contest was probably the one I watched soonest after it landed. At approximately 9.15am on the day it became available on the BBC iplayer (the 17th May 2025), Scott - fan friend mentioned a few times before on the blog - commented to our fan WhatsApp group warning the rest of us that we shouldn't go online until we'd watched the story as there would be spoilers everywhere. I viewed it as soon as I could get the middle child (boy of 16, 15 at the time, and the biggest Doctor Who fan in the house after me) settled in front of the living room TV with me.

Reaction:

Just as in his first term as showrunner, Russell T Davies seems to have a structure for each season of his second era. Each corresponding one of the eight episodes of 2024 and 2025 have similar shapes: the first two stories of both are relatively lightweight introductory tales, the first set out in space, the second in Earth's past. Those second episodes both feature a new villain from the Big Bad band that is the Pantheon of Discord, a taster for the two-part finales that will feature a returning villain from Doctor Who's history that has become a member of said group of titanic nasties. Third is a futuristic actioner with lots of hardware; the fourth stories are Doctor-lite, contemporary Earth stories centred around Ruby Sunday and featuring UNIT (teeing that organisation up for a return appearance in the two-part finale too). The fifth story is the thoughtful one, leaving the sixth - the last before that big finale - to be the camp one. Rogue filled this space in 2024, and in 2025 The Interstellar Song Contest manages to out-camp Rogue (no mean feat). The Doctor even uses the word to describe one moment during the action (using a confetti cannon to fly through space back to safety) - one of a few moments where the story comes as close as it can to a wink at the camera. In a way, though, this is misdirection. In the same way as long ago in 2005 episode Bad Wolf, the audience is presented with a high-concept idea (extreme futuristic versions of contemporary game shows in that instance) to disguise a twist involving the return of a classic Who enemy.

The 2025 high-concept idea ("Die Hard meets Eurovision" was the brief according to writer Juno Dawson) has us looking one way, when from another direction we're suddenly surprised by the return not just of a classic Who enemy, but a classic Who ally as well. Unlike in 2005, the surprises were not blown in the Coming Soon trailer the previous week either. These significant revelations from the season's arc plot (see Deeper Thoughts section for more on them) don't come at the expense of the story of the week. As well as being camp, The Interstellar Song Contest is pacey and fun. After several stories fumbling the motivations of their 'toxic' male villains, Kid is given a solid, straightforward rationale for his actions, and Freddie Fox brings the character to life excellently. Unlike with Alan Budd and Conrad Clark, the audience can legitimately feel sympathy for Kid's cause even though they don't agree with the murderous plans he makes in its name. The scene near the end of the Doctor ('ice' put in his heart by his time in the cold of space) torturing Kid shows the Doctor as the more toxic of the two males involved. It's a nice counterpoint tonally to the rest of the piece, a bit of grit in the oyster. The only issue is that it doesn't feel resolved; the Doctor doesn't face any consequences and barely even reflects. This is one of a few loose ends. The company that destroyed Hellia presumably faces no comeuppance, and the planet's unfair reputation remains in place. With the antagonists still alive at the end and all that unfinished business, there is potential for Kid and accomplice Wynn to return (if Doctor Who starts up again sometime soon).

Another good aspect of the season-wide plot shown here is Bel's character arc; this story sees her fully embrace the companion role, with her "Oh, we're so staying" at the start when she realises where she is, and the early scenes of her enjoying the contest. Again, this feels unresolved by the end of this story and the season: the trajectory feels like it's leading to a choice of whether to stay home once she gets there, or continue travelling with the Doctor; that's not what transpires (although it may have been part of the original plan before Ncuti decided to leave). All these loose ends are forgotten as the end blows everything away (somewhat literally) and moves on to the next thing. Does it make any sense, though? With the vindicator readings, the TARDIS is finally able to travel back to the 24th of May 2025, but when it reaches there, there's an explosion. This is the destruction of the planet caused by the Rani, evidence of which has been scattered through previous episodes. In the finale, though, we find that the Doctor is a part of the Rani's plans; his doubt contributes to the gradual destruction of the planet seen in the following episodes. So, how could it have happened before the TARDIS took him to Earth? This is more an issue arising from Wish World and The Reality War than the story that preceded them, though, so it might just need to be chalked up to 'timey-wimey' and put to the back of our minds when looking at The Interstellar Song Contest.

Even though it briefly features and leads in to Time Lord friends and foes and their universe-scale machinations, The Interstellar Song Contest's strength is in showcasing ordinary people / aliens. The story isn't really like Die Hard; in that movie the hero is operating alone, trapped in the enclosed area where the action's taking place. Here it's a slightly different trope: the plucky band of misfits who seem totally out-gunned, but who come together to win the day. Each one of these is written and performed well: the married couple having a realistic row, Mike and Gary (played by Kadiff Kirwan and Charlie Condou) turn out to have the tech skills and nursing skills to help the Doctor; the singer harbouring a secret and her manager (Miriam-Teak Lee and Akemnji Ndifornyen); the director behind the scenes (Kiruna Stamell). Then there are a couple of people gamely playing themselves, Rylan Clark and Graham Norton. Production values are consistently good: design, CGI and physical effects and prosthetics combine to make an expansive and diverse set of aliens in a consistent, believable world. Composer Murray Gold rises to the challenge of creating some Eurovision-like songs as well as his usual incidental music. There are some great lines in the script ("You'd need to be some sort of insane genius." "Hello. I'm the Doctor."). It all adds up to a very enjoyable experience.

Connectivity:

Both The Interstellar Song Contest and The Two Doctors include an appearance from a 1960s companion, appearing in the series again for the first time since The Five Doctors in 1983 (Susan, Jamie). Both feature female villains that first appeared in the Colin Baker era of Doctor Who (the Rani, Chessene).

Deeper Thoughts:

Never overlook the obvious. Unless you're busy. Sometime in 2005 before the first run of the new, returned Doctor Who was complete, there was an article or maybe a released synopsis that described eleventh episode of that year Boom Town. It said that it would involve the Doctor running into a woman from his past, or words to that effect. Immediately, a lot of the fan community speculated that it was the Rani, or Susan, or Romana (in that order of perceived likelihood). Needless to say, everyone that speculated wildly was then equally wildly disappointed when it turned out to be Annette Badland returning as Margaret Blaine, a character seen a few weeks earlier in Aliens of London / World War Three. Thereafter, various hints or non-hints caused similar bouts of speculation to occasionally break out. The trailer running ahead of Peter Capladi's second season finished with a brief clip from The Woman Who Lived: Maisie Williams's character unmasks, an astonished Doctor says "You!", and she replies "What took you so long, old man?". There was a short period of fevered imaginings about who Williams could be playing. The perceived order of likelihood this time was Susan, Romana, the Rani, mainly based on the actor's age. The disappointment was the same, and for the same reason: it turned out just to be a recurring character from that particular season, not the return of some longer-term character from the show's history. Over the years, it wasn't even necessary for any particular event to spur on the speculation, Every year from 2005, someone somewhere - probably multiple someones in many places - were fervently expecting the return of the Rani, or Susan, or Romana.

For every fan speculating there was a least another folding their arms and telling that first fan that they were mistaken. The Rani, to pick one example, was never coming back according to this second group. I have to admit I leant more towards their way of thinking. One reason for this was the Rani as a character doesn't have much definition beyond 'villainous female Time Lord'. Any individuality came from the performance Kate O' Mara gave in the two stories she appeared in as the Rani in the late 1980s. The creators of the character Pip and Jane Baker had put down on the page that she was amoral rather than evil. She was only interested in science and saw humans as experimental fodder, but she wouldn't harm a human if it didn't advance her studies. O' Mara didn't play her like that, though, she played her (impeccably) as a hissable panto villain. It didn't seem worth bringing the character back unless you could bring the actor back too. O' Mara, though, wasn't really doing television acting once the show was back (she only has two imdb credits post-2005). She then passed away in 2014. The same year, the Master was returned to Doctor Who regenerated into a woman. So, the female Time Lord panto villain gap was filled. What would be the point after that in bringing back the Rani? Of course, the fun of the character's return in Ncuti Gatwa's era is that there is no real point. The speculators had been assuming every female villain in the show was going to turn out to be the Rani for nearly 20 years, it would be far too obvious for the mysterious Mrs. Flood to turn out to be the Rani. The arms-folded naysayers like myself, though, had been so consistently proved right about the character's non-return, over and again for nearly twenty years, that it flipped things and the most obvious reveal turned out to be the most surprising.

Susan then returns in the self-same episode. Russell T Davies had put a reference to Susan in The Devil's Chord in Gatwa's first season. The Doctor telling Ruby that he has a granddaughter was the most explicit reference to the character in decades. Later in the year, there were hints and speculations by the characters that the mysterious woman whose face the Doctor and Ruby keep seeing across the universe was Susan. That character's name was Susan, and she was even played by an actor called Susan. It was far too obvious that she would turn out to be the real, actual Susan. And she wasn't; it was too soon for everybody's guard to be down such that the obvious return would still be surprising. Davies waited until the next season when everyone had forgotten, and then brought her back. Not in a big finale, just in the middle of the penultimate story of the year that everyone might have assumed was all about Space Eurovision. The series has pulled similar switcheroos before. For example, in 1980s story Remembrance of the Daleks, there is a character that looks and sounds a lot like Davros who turns out not to be Davros. Davros then returns anyway, but not where a viewer might have expected. Writer of that story Ben Aaronovitch originally only had the first twist; he realised during rewriting that the audience would feel shortchanged, and included Davros after all. Davies has done the same, but over the course of a season rather than a story. Where can the show go from here (assuming it comes back)? There's still Romana, of course, but I can't see any particular reason to bring her back (time travelling companion whom the Doctor fancies has been done with River Song). I was wrong about the Rani, though, so what do I know? 

In Summary:

Camp and fun, just like Eurovision, but pacier and with added Doctor Who continuity: what's not to like?